Tess's Tale (The Chanel Series Book 3) (5 page)

‘Look at that?’ He pointed at a couple of bulldozers sitting next to a huge hole near the front of the casino. I knew he was trying to distract me.

‘What’s going on?

‘They started landscaping without a planning permit.’

‘You need a permit to build a garden?’

‘It’s going to be an ornate garden with fountains. Lots of big holes to dig for mature plants. Now they need to wait for the permit to come through. It’s going to take months.’

I shifted my gaze from the huge hole in the ground back to the setting sun. ‘It’s beautiful.’ My face was so close to the window a little circle of fog formed.

‘Not as beautiful as you.’ He pulled me against him and wrapped his arms around me.

I leant back into him and sighed. He felt so big and strong. ‘My husband.’ I turned to him as I ran my tongue over those words.

‘My wife.’

I liked the sound of
those
words even better.

He bent his head and kissed me and all my nerves flew out the window. Suddenly there were no pretty lights. There was just Harry. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him hard against me. And then, a delicious amount of time later, I finally got my way.

***

We’d been blissfully married for a month when Jolly Jim next came to the club. There was nothing jolly about him at all when he sat in the booth nearest the stage. His face had a grey pallor and even though the day was not that hot he had a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Lou the Brain, Mickey and Riley followed in a close pack and sat opposite him. If Jim looked stressed, Lou looked positively nauseous. Mickey and Riley looked as if they couldn’t remember their own names, but there was nothing new there.

Something bad had gone down.

Jim pivoted in his seat and looked at Harry and me. He crooked a finger and Harry slid off the bar stool.

‘Better go see what he wants.’

I bit my tongue to stop any smart remarks escaping. I didn’t like the fact that Jim only had to crook a finger to get Harry to jump. That was
my
job.

Harry came back a minute later and said, ‘He wants to meet you.’

‘Me?’ My voice came out as a squeak.

Harry squeezed my hand. ‘He won’t bite. And besides, he
is
my father.’

He had a point. It was the least I could do for him. I took a deep breath and re-arranged my dress and then followed Harry back to Jim.

Jolly Jim looked up at me and then patted his knee. ‘Have a seat.’

‘No thank you.’

He patted his knee again. ‘Sit.’ His voice was gruff and held the tone of a man used to getting his own way.

‘I only sit on my husband’s knee.’ I glanced sideways at Harry. He had a small smile on his face.

Jim let out a laugh. It held the maniacal edge of a mad man.

‘Looks like you got yourself a feisty one,’ he said to Harry. ‘That’s good. She’ll keep you on your toes.’

‘She certainly does that,’ Harry murmured.

‘Now about your present.’

‘We don’t need a present,’ I said. I didn’t want anything from him.

‘You tellin’ me I can’t give my own son a wedding gift?’ His glare forced me back a step.

‘We already have everything we need.’ I stopped short of saying each other.

‘Nonsense.’ His hand made a crack as it connected with the table top and I hopped back another step. ‘All ya got is each other.’

I raised my chin in the air and looked down at him. ‘I must thank you for that.’

He looked baffled.

‘Harry is a wonderful husband. And that must have come from somewhere. I’m guessing it’s the fine example you have set him over the years.’ Nobody could say I couldn’t bullshit with the best of them. It was a well-known fact that Jolly Jim had been anything but faithful to Harry’s deceased mother, Eva.

‘Well now,’ Jim puffed out his chest, ‘you still need a proper present. I’m having something delivered.’ He turned away from me to Harry. ‘Sit down, there’s somethin’ ya need to hear.’

Realising a dismissal when I heard one, I wandered back to my bar stool. Harry was still sitting in the booth when I climbed onto the stage, but now his face was as grave as theirs.

At the end of my last song they all stood up and shuffled out of the booth. Harry held his arm out to me. It trembled slightly as it wrapped around my waist.

‘See ya Tess,’ Mickey said. I nodded my head at him and then he and Riley headed for the front door.

Lou bobbed his head at me before he left, but I pretended I didn’t see. Jim held his arms out and moved in for a hug. With a table and chairs behind me there was nowhere to go. He wrapped me in his arms and squeezed hard enough that my ribs had a real good think about breaking. Then he whispered in my ear, ‘You can have him for now, but family always comes home to roost.’

‘I am his family now,’ I whispered back. I pasted my biggest, brightest smile on as I pushed back from him, but it was so brittle I felt my face might shatter.

‘Real little hell cat,’ Jolly Jim said. There was something akin to approval in his voice.

‘What was that about?’ Harry led me back to the bar.

‘That’s not important,’ I said. ‘What
you
were talking about obviously was.’

He sighed and slumped onto his bar stool. ‘Do you remember me telling you about Dick?’

‘The guy that broke Cindy’s heart?’

He nodded. ‘They found him and Silent Sal at the warehouse.’

‘Dead?’

Even though I’d been the one to say it, when he nodded his head again I felt dread tap me on the shoulder and take a seat on my lap.

‘How?’ I was torn between knowing and not knowing.

‘Shot in the head. Execution style.’

Yep. It was just like when you pass a bad car accident, wanting to see what had happened, then unable to wipe the grisly snapshot from your mind. I didn’t even know what they looked like but my mind did a pretty good job of sketching them in.

‘Giuseppe Greco.’ The name came out in a hoarse whisper. ‘He’s here then?’

‘No.’ Harry ran one hand through his hair. ‘He wouldn’t have killed them like that.’

‘What would he have done?’ Why did these questions keep coming out of my mouth?

‘He would have tortured them.’ My face must have showed the turmoil my stomach was feeling. ‘Hey,’ he said, dragging me onto his knee. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’

‘It’s not
me
I’m worried about.’

We were silent for a moment, listening to Helene sing. ‘So who did it?’ As much as I told myself I didn’t want to talk about it, I couldn’t seem to help myself.

‘They don’t know. But Dad had Dick and Silent Sal looking into the missing money.’

‘So either the killer was the one who took the money, or…’

‘Or someone taking advantage of the current turmoil to try and weaken Dad’s position.’

‘I thought your Dad was the boss.’

He pulled a face. ‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’

‘How?’ I seemed to be saying that a lot that night.

‘Dad represents the Las Vegas Mafia on the Mafia Commission.’

‘You guys have a commission?’

‘The
Mafiosi
have a commission, yes.’ He said Mafiosi in such a way as to delineate himself from them.

A smug smile crept onto my face. Me one, Jolly Jim none.

‘There are quite a few bosses in Vegas. Most of them own casinos. At the moment they all answer to Dad.’ He paused and scratched his chin. ‘It wasn’t always that way. But about ten years ago the FBI had a huge crackdown in Vegas. It was either work together or die. Now there are contractual agreements between the owners of all the casinos. They all own a stake in each other’s properties. It makes it very difficult to determine who is behind what.’

‘Which one does your Dad own?’ I had a sneaking suspicion things might go better for me if I didn’t know all this, but hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.

‘The Pink Flamingo.’

I let out a whistle. ‘That’s a nice hotel.’

‘It’s the biggest.’

‘That’s why he’s the boss?’

Harry nodded and reached over to the bar to pick up the beer Thor had just placed in front of him. Thor and Liss were too busy to listen to our conversation but I was planning on filling them in later. It wasn’t fair to them to have us living there without knowing the potential threat. If they weren’t happy about it, we would just have to move out.

‘So you think someone might be trying to climb the Mafiosi ladder?’

‘They’re all pretty pissed. Dad’s in charge of the money, but it comes from all of them.’

It was a grim thought. A city full of angry Mob bosses hungry for your blood. I didn’t think I’d have the guts to come out in public if I were Jim. But that’s why
I
was just a saloon singer and
he
was the Mob boss.

The present from Jolly Jim turned up the next day while Harry and I were enjoying a leisurely brunch. He was on a break from college and Thor and Liss had employed him as the club’s handyman. It had turned out the only thing that had needed the attention of a handyman that morning had been me.

Liss brought the extravagantly wrapped box into the kitchen and placed it on the table.

‘This just came for you two.’ She plucked a card from the outside of the box and handed it to me.

‘Harry and Tess’ had been written so hard onto the envelope that at one point, the tip of the pen had pierced the paper. I handed it to Harry. Nobody I knew was that uptight.

He used his knife to slit the end of the envelope and then pulled out the card. ‘It’s from Dad.’ He placed the card back onto the table and reached out for the gift.

‘What do you think it is?’ My voice came out a few notes higher than normal.

Oh
please
don’t let it be a horse’s head.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

I was betting he wasn’t guessing horse’s head.

He finished removing the paper and opened the box. I let out a sigh of relief when he didn’t utter an oath and jump back from the contents.

So
not
a horse’s head.

‘It’s a punch set.’

‘Oh lovely.’ Liss reached into the box and pulled out the bowl. Glasses, wrapped in tissue paper, nestled in its depth. ‘We don’t have a punch bowl. We’ll be able to use this for your party.’

‘Our party?’ I didn’t know anything about a party.

She pulled a face and looked at Harry. I glanced between the two of them. It was evident by the guilty look on both their faces that a conversation I should have been a part of had happened without me.

‘Well,’ Liss said, ‘you didn’t really have a proper reception, and nobody from Harry’s side was at the wedding….’

I knew she thought she was doing us a favour so I resisted the urge to shout, ‘That’s because we didn’t want them there.’ And then a thought occurred to me. Harry had known about this as well, which meant perhaps I
had
been the only one who hadn’t wanted them there. What sort of control freak did that make me?

I sighed, picked up the punch bowl and smiled at Harry. ‘It’s beautiful.’

His shoulders relaxed slightly but the look on his face was still tense.

I suspected if I tried to keep him away from his Dad I would only end up driving a wedge between us. ‘So when is our party?’

‘Next Saturday. We were going to tell you. We just hadn’t worked out how.’ His voice trailed off as if realising how bad that sounded.

Geez, anyone would think I had two heads and scales. ‘It’s okay.’ I reached out a hand and took his. I hadn’t been
that
unreasonable, had I?

Of course I should have guessed that Jolly Jim had only just begun his win-back-my-son campaign.

The phone rang about five minutes later. Thor put down the paper and reached behind him to pick up the receiver. ‘Yellow,’ he said in his deep baritone. ‘Yup. He’s right here. I’ll put him on.’

He picked up the phone and handed it and the receiver across the table to Harry.

I met Liss’s eyes and she grimaced. We both knew who it was.

‘Yep thanks Dad, we just finished opening it… Yes, we love it… Tess said it was beautiful… We’re going to use it at the party next Saturday… No, we’ve already planned it… Huh, that many… No, you’re right, they won’t all fit here… Well in that case I guess that would be a better plan… I’m sure it’s not too late to cancel the catering… No need to reimburse us… Okay, thanks again… See you then.’

He hung up the receiver and handed the phone back to Thor. I knew he was using the action as a diversion tactic, and try as hard as I might, I couldn’t stop my foot from tapping on the floor.

‘Change of plans?’ Liss said in the same tone of voice she might have used to ask him if he wanted milk in his coffee.

‘Turns out Dad invited some of his friends to the party.’ He smiled grimly. ‘They won’t all fit here.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she said in the same calm voice.

‘How many?’ I was proud of how level my voice sounded.

‘Oh a hundred, or two.’

‘Two hundred?’
Goodbye
level voice,
hello
helium-balloon sucking woman.

‘Maybe a few more.’

I collapsed back into my seat. Just how many Mafiosi were there in Vegas? It occurred to me, not for the first time, how naïve I was,
especially
considering I had grown up in a house frequented by a mobster.

‘You know what this means?’ Liss had an excited look in her eyes.

‘Yes.’ Visions of hordes of men, ready to execute my father-in-law danced in the front of my mind. We were all going to die.

‘We need to go dress shopping.’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ I lied.

***

The next week was surreal. I mean, I’d gone from wanting nothing to do with the Mafia, to picking which flowers I wanted at my Mob-hosted party. The phone rang hard and fast with queries varying from which canapés I would prefer, to what colour did I want the chair covers to be. It soon became clear that Jim didn’t just want Harry back in the fold. He wanted me there as well.

I felt trapped and bullied, but as much as I hated to admit it, I enjoyed the attention as well. Jolly Jim caught wind of Liss and my plans to go dress shopping and sent a limousine to pick us up. Champagne on ice waited in a bucket with two crystal glasses, and for once Liss said nothing about my being underage.

The unfamiliar flow of the alcohol through my veins bolstered my mood, and when the chauffeur opened the door and told us that the manager in Prada was waiting for us, I didn’t say a thing. If Jim wanted to butter me up by buying Liss and me dresses, then I might as well let him.

But as beautiful as the silky material of the evening gowns felt on my skin, as stunning as the cut of the dresses were, I couldn’t totally squash a feeling that was growing in the pit of my stomach. As we carried our glossy Prada bags with their tissue-paper-wrapped garments back to the limousine I finally identified the feeling.

I felt like I had sold out.

The champagne helped and by the time we had been taken shopping for make-up, shoes and were dropped at the day spa to get our hair and nails done, I had managed to convince myself I was only doing it for Harry.

‘What do you think?’ I stared at Liss in the mirror. My hairdresser, Sebastian, was holding a swathe of dyed hair next to my face. It was fiery red.

Liss tilted her head to the side while she examined my reflection. ‘It makes your eyes pop.’

‘And it brings out the sun-kissed hue of her skin.’ Sebastian was a gusher.

I resisted the urge to giggle. Sun-kissed hue? With my current lifestyle I was practically a vampire.

‘Liss?’ I wasn’t sure if the desire to make such a dramatic change to my hair was purely my own, or mostly the alcohol’s.

‘You’ll look fabulous. And that green dress you bought will look amazing.’

I met Sebastian’s eyes in the mirror. ‘Let’s do it.’ I just wished I felt as confident about it as I sounded.

He snipped and he coloured and a couple of hours later he blow-dried my new style. Then he smoothed my shiny new bob into place with his fingers, stepped back and with a, ‘Tadaa,’ whipped off my apron and spun me around to face the mirror.

Liss was right. The colour was fabulous, and even though I was married and working, for the first time I felt all grown up. My hair had been shoulder length, mousy brown and, compared to how it looked now, scraggly. Now I looked like a woman who belonged in Prada. With my new hair and my polished nails I looked expensive. Which, I was guessing, was exactly what Jolly Jim had been after.

If he was going to present me as family to all his friends and business partners I had to look the part. Especially, with how things currently stood within the Mob. Weakness of any kind would not be tolerated.

I hadn’t wanted to be a part of that life, but it seemed I was not going to be able to pry Harry totally away from his father. If I was to keep Harry safe I had to play my part.

So I stood up, turned to Sebastian and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘It’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘When should I come back in for a trim?’ A haircut there would cost me my weekly wage. I was going to have to rely on my father-in-law. That grated more than I was willing to admit.

***

I was a little nervous the eve of the party. All right – so it was more than just a
little
. I had to redo my make-up twice because just when I had it perfect I found myself curled over the toilet bowl heaving up my stomach contents.

‘We don’t have to do this.’ Harry, despite my protests – I mean what new wife wants her husband to see her doing
that
– was holding my hair back from my face.

‘Yes we do.’ I stood up and rinsed out my mouth in the bathroom sink. I didn’t even want to think about what Jolly Jim would do if we didn’t show up. The face he would lose would be intolerable. It could possibly be the spark that started a full-blown gang war. Nope, we were going, no matter
how
many times I had to redo my make-up.

I slipped into my dark-green evening gown, shimmering the silky material down my body and turning so that Harry could zip me up. With the stilettos, my clutch and my bundle of nerves I was ready to go.

‘You look stunning,’ Harry whispered. He bent and grazed the side of my neck with his lips.

I found myself calculating if I had time to redo my face one more time. I didn’t. So instead of turning into him and redirecting his lips to mine, I stepped away and adjusted his bow tie. Then, while I regained control of my libido, I dusted invisible dust off the arms of his jacket.

‘Come on handsome.’ I took his hand in mine. ‘Don’t want to be late.’

‘You mean later,’ Liss said from the doorway. She looked beautiful in her new midnight-blue gown. It clung to her bosom and her hips in all the right ways. ‘The car’s been here for ten minutes.’

We followed her down to the foyer. Brittney and Helene were running the club that night. Brittney eyed me up and down and said, ‘You don’t scrub up too bad considering you’re yet to fill out.’ My relationship with her had progressed to what I imagined having a big sister might be like. A big sister, that was, that didn’t hate me.

I stuck my tongue out at her and she grinned. ‘Have fun.’

Liss, Thor and Harry chatted during the drive. I heard snatches of their conversation about works they were planning to complete on the club that week, but mostly I stared out the window and concentrated on keeping my breathing even. The nausea was back and I couldn’t afford to disgrace myself.

Way
too soon we were pulling up in front of the Pink Flamingo. I placed my arm on Harry’s and concentrated on getting into the foyer without tripping. An elevator ride later, we were stepping into a room overlooking the night lights of Las Vegas. I call it a room, but the ceiling soared high above us and easily two hundred people mingled within it without being squashed.

‘Here they are, the happy couple.’ Jolly Jim swooped upon us like an eagle onto its prey. He wore a smile, but the crazy look was back in his eyes.

The room fell into silence and every person turned towards us. My stomach asked my tonsils if it could pass by. My tonsils denied it access.

Jim’s smile hardened till it looked like his mouth was stuck like that. It was show time.

‘Father.’ I smiled broadly as I clasped his hands. Then I leaned in and kissed his cheeks. ‘Everything looks wonderful.’

Harry clasped Jim and slapped him on the back and people started to lose interest, turning back to their previous conversations.

‘Felicity,’ Jim said. ‘That gown becomes you. I hope you’ll save me a dance later on.’

‘It would be my pleasure.’

The look on Thor’s face said it wouldn’t be
his
.

‘Come.’ Jolly Jim held onto my hand. ‘We must introduce you to everybody.’

I think I did quite well. I nodded and smiled and made all the right noises at the right time. But I could feel my anxiety mounting with every Harvey the Hand and Moe the Moose that was introduced to me.

Liss appeared at my side and pressed a glass of champagne into my hand. ‘Drink this,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth.

‘What’s in it?’

She gave me a funny look but said, ‘Alcohol.’

‘Oh, right.’ I was hoping she’d slipped some kind of sedative into it. It would be nice to wake up and find that the whole thing was over.

The alcohol took enough of the edge off that when the first one was finished I excused myself and headed for the bar. I knew I could have gotten one of the staff floating around the room to get me one, but I was in need of some space.

As I waited for my drink to be poured, a man stood beside me and said, ‘You’re hard to get alone.’

‘Well it is my wedding reception.’ I turned to examine his face. Had I already met him?

‘Funny having a wedding reception so late after the wedding. Did you plan it like that on purpose?’

‘I didn’t plan it at all.’

He stared into my eyes for a moment and then said, ‘I didn’t think so.’

I took a sip of my drink while I looked him up and down. ‘You’re not with them,’ I finally said.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Your suit is off the rack.’ It was a little too broad in the shoulder and a little too snug in the hip.

The corners of his mouth curled up. ‘You’re not with them either. Are you Tess?’

‘How do
you
know that?’ I edged away from him a little. Who
was
he?

‘Your use of the word
them
, not
us
.’

He had me there.

‘Tess.’ I heard Harry call my name. ‘Dad wants you to come and meet Sam the Suit.’

‘Ring me if you need any help.’ He murmured it quickly, pressing a card into my hand. Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd. I was guessing he hadn’t been invited.

A quick peep at the card gave me more information than I wanted in
that
environment. A card with Tristan Penn the FBI agent’s number on it was a dangerous thing to be holding. I stuffed it into my clutch and pasted a smile on my face. Then I took a slug of my drink.